The Ed Bott Report

Get outspoken insights and expert advice on the products and companies that define today's tech landscape, from a source who knows these technologies inside and out.

Ed Bott

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. He has served as editor of the U.S. edition of PC Computing and managing editor of PC World; both publications had monthly paid circulation in excess of 1 million during his tenure. He is the author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, including Windows 7 Inside Out (2009) and Office 2013 Inside Out (2013).

The fourth feature update to Windows 10 is scheduled to arrive in October. It's packed with a wide assortment of new and refined features, including some new security options designed to block zero-day exploits and ransomware.

You're signed in as an administrator, so why does Windows keep running your programs as if you were a standard user? Here's how to force any program (with one major exception) to run using your elevated credentials.

In Windows 10, File Explorer's left-hand pane gives preferred status to cloud services such as OneDrive. If you prefer old-school navigation techniques, you can restore the classic hierarchy, with everything in a tree under the Desktop node.

If you're signing in to Windows 10 with a Microsoft account, you can access important settings from an online dashboard. Here are direct shortcuts to options for security and privacy, as well as a page that logs attempts to hack your Microsoft account.

Having a secondary user account is useful for troubleshooting problems with your primary account. Here's how to create a local account and set it up as an Administrator so it's available when you need it.

As Windows 10 reaches its second birthday, the support clock for earlier versions is ticking. Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows Vista earlier this year, and support for Office 2007 ends in a few months. So how long until Windows 7, Office 2010, and other currently supported versions reach the end of the line?

Adding your own customized program shortcuts to the Start menu is easy, once you know where those shortcuts are stored. Here's how to create your own subfolder full of one-click links to tasks in the Settings app.

Microsoft confirmed today that PCs using Intel's Clover Trail CPUs will be blocked from Windows 10 upgrades. But in a major change of the "Windows as a Service" policy, those devices will continue to get security updates.